Lycans and vampires are natural enemies. The Bloodguard are the exception, wolves who forge bonds that let both natures coexist.
But a Lycan’s mate turning vampire?That’s cruel in a way only fate can be.
Because vampires don’t carry life, they don’t build families, or get futures like that. Everything stops with us. Blood in, blood out. End of the line.
I watch the truth hit Rogue.
His whole body locks up for half a second like something reached into his chest and snapped bone from the inside. The kind of pain a man can’t fight because there’s nothing to punch, nothing to kill, nothing to bleed for to make it better.
No kids in his future with Charlotte.
No little pieces of him running through the clubhouse someday. No family that looks like them.
Just…nothing.
No tiny heartbeat curled against his chest. No pup with his dark eyes and Charlie’s stubborn mouth. No future where he teaches a son to shift or watches a daughter take her first unsteady steps across wooden floors.
Valeria didn’t just take his mate.
She severed his wolf bloodline.
Rogue’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t break. That’s not who he is. Still, I feel it, the grief sliding under his ribs like a blade. He would have been a good father. The kind who stands behind a pup without crowding them, who lets them fall but never lets them stay down.
And now?
Now that future is gone.
But he is my Bloodguard.
I think of the centuries stretching ahead of us, of dens filled with noise, chaos, and the next generation tumbling over oneanother in the snow. One of his brothers will have kids, perhaps even one of the brothers in the MC. And when that time comes, Rogue will be there, teaching them to hunt, to fight, to control the wolf inside them.
An uncle by blood and in name only.
But something far more in practice.
It won’t replace what was stolen.
Nothing will.
But when the centuries finally weigh heavy and the time comes for leadership to pass, one of those pups, someone strong, raised in our code, could take his place. Although Rogue can never be replaced.
Rogue won’t father a bloodline, but hewillshape one.
And that matters.
Still… as I watch him stand there, shoulders squared, staring down a future rewritten without his consent, I know this much…
Valeria didn’t just declare war.
She made it goddamn personal.
“She’s sending a message through you,” I say. “Revenge.”
“For what?” Scorch demands.
“I condemned her. My testimony sealed her fate. She swore revenge, promised she’d make me lose everything.”
“She’ll create more,” Hex predicts. “Build an army. Force the Coven’s hand.”
